It Is Difficult To Remember What Comes Next

It is difficult to remember when it was or could be, but the
August sun was low, the air was clear and damp, and the roads
were still, except for the rattle and ring of cycles and bells. We
were walking through narrow lanes, offering to sing songs
about the songs we’d all sung during the darkness. A few doors
declined to open, and from time to time insults fell on us from
behind shuttered windows: immigrant, infiltrator, anti-
national, traitor— and other hard words which no longer
possessed any power or meaning. But on most corners, small
crowds greeted us with slaps on the back and many joined in
when we sang. In the late afternoon, as we crossed a muddy
field newly planted with tomato and pepper seedlings, a boy
ran up from behind us and demanded to know if we
remembered the song we’d been singing on Rajpath when the
police threw down their lathis and guns and melted into the
rising sea we’d all become. We solemnly nodded, then one of
us sputtered, and we all started laughing and shouting and
singing together. Later, we agreed that the song still tasted cool
and sweet every time we sang it, like water drawn from a hand
pump, like freedom.